Crazy People Are Everywhere

[n2doc]

Jonathan Chait
April 18, 2011

Gawker's story on Fox News president Roger Ailes has to be read to be believed. The basic story is that Ailes purchased the little newspaper of the small town in upstate New York where he planned to live. He then cleaned out its editor and hand-picked Joe Lindsley, a young editorial assistant from the Weekly Standard, to run it is a Fox News-style propaganda organ and took a strangely intense interest in its operation.

Then the story gets really weird:

Ailes confronted the three staffers and accused them of badmouthing him and Elizabeth during their lunch breaks. Small towns being what they are, Lindsley, Haley, and Panny frequently drove several miles north of the News and Recorder's Cold Spring, N.Y., office to privately have lunch in another town. When Ailes accused them, he knew which restaurant they frequented, leading the three to believe that Ailes wasn't merely bluffing and that he'd actually had them followed.

After Lindsley quit for good, things got weirder. He was driving to a deli in Cold Spring for lunch earlier this month when he noticed a black Lincoln Navigator that seemed to be following him, according to several sources familiar with the incident. Lindsley drove aimlessly for a while to make sure he was being followed, and the Navigator stayed on him. Then he got a look at the driver, who was a News Corporation security staffer that Lindsley happened to know socially. Lindsley continued on his way and later called the driver to ask if he was following him. The answer was yes, at Ailes' direction. ...


more

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/86994/crazy-people-are-everywhere

Key line: "There are powerful people everywhere, and a great many of them are out of their gourds."

[Mz Pip]

1. Paranoid rich people

can be dangerous. The have the resources to do a lot of damage to a perceived enemy.